The National Bolshevik (NatsBol) meeting was at the Monument to the Heroes of the Revolution of 1905-1907, festooned with the black-red flags of movement, though the chiliastic chic of Limonov’s monthly rant was somewhat checked by the Mickey D. golden arch and the skyscrapers of the Moscow financial district in the background.
Eduard Limonov is a most idiosyncratic figure. A dissident Jew (or maybe not; it’s unclear) who emigrated to New York and spent the 1970-80s doing drugs and having trysts with powerful Negro studs, Eddie returned to Russia in the 1990s where he took up the banner of the red brown alliance – with far more punk, homosex, and an unusually good female-to-male ratio by 1488 standards.
He published the book Another Russia in 2001, calling on youth to dig into the bunkers and wage a total war against the bureaucrats, businessmen, and assorted bugmen of the modern world. Unlike other nihilist philosophers, who are a dime a dozen, he actually proceeded to follow up his words with actions, attempting to foment a Russian insurrection in north Kazakhstan, for which he did a stint in jail.
After spending the 2000s in rabid opposition to Putin, after the reunification with Crimea and the war in the Donbass he finally learned to love the Leader.
Clearly a most “passionary” fellow, so I thought it worthwhile to come check out what he had to say.
The introductory slogans were simple: “Stalin, Beria, gulag.” “Confiscate and divide.”
Unlike your typical kremlinoid bugman, who speaks of rossiyane citizens or even “inhabitants of Russia,” Limonov is unafraid to speak to and about ethnic russkie. (In general, the russkie/rossiyane ratio is a good proxy for how based a Russian politician is).
Re-Ukraine. He seems to identify the Russian World with the geographic areas where the Russian language is predominant – that is, the eight oblasts of prospective Novorossiya. The rest of the Ukraine he proposed to divide with Romania, Poland, and Hungary – in a process also detaching them from the EU, which is “sending them nothing but migrants.” The latter reflects a rather serious detachment from reality. Romanians were unenthusiastic even about their lost Wallachian provinces, i.e. Moldova, to say nothing of territorial ambitions in the Ukraine. As for the EU, it sends all of those countries the yearly equivalent of more than a thousand Euros’ worth of welfare payments per capita; in return, all they ask of them is to take in some token number of refugees, who all proceed to go on to the richer gibsmedats pastures of Germany and Sweden anyway. Seriously, I doubt even a dozen of the recent Syrian immigrants ended up permanently settling in any of those countries. In the meantime, they get to entertain themselves by sticking a middle finger to the Eurocrats.
More geopolitical comments. Trump and his $110 arms deal with the Saudis – Russia can’t compete with that kind of money, because its not rich enough, because of its cold climate (past instances of “confiscate and divide” obviously not mentioned as contributory factors).
He is a big fan of Kurdistan, thinks Russia should support it more actively. Wants a bigger military contingent in Syria, including ground forces. Very boomer mindset.
Macron is fat, but “fancies himself a D’Artagnan” – original line of attack, if a somewhat strange one (is Macron actually fat? Never noticed). Claims that he was owned by Putin. My impression was that it was rather the other way round – Macron received Putin at the Palace of Versailles. The last foreign dignitary to be given a reception there was Gaddafi in 2007 under President Sarkozy, who in a few more years met a sticky end thanks in large part to Sarkozy himself. The impression that this was a deliberate slight was reinforced by the post-reception press conference, where Macron called RT and Sputnik journalists propagandists to Putin’s face and said that France would bomb Syria if it were to use chemical weapons again. But no matter – according to Limonov, Putin subdued Macron, and made him “respect” him, laying the foundations for improved relations with France. So much so that perhaps in the near future Russians “will be able to go France to help beat up immigrants.”
Now I am personally not a fan of beating up immigrants. Document checks and deportations seem to be the more civilized and effective policy. Still, if you are a nationalist of some sort, and want to beat up immigrants, shouldn’t you prioritize the ones in your own country? E.g., the up to 10 million illegals in Russia?
crickets
I mean, I don’t want to be too tough on Limonov, who at least is red-pilled on race (in another part of his speech, he said the US has a lot of Negroes, “half of whom are on welfare”). This alone places him far closer to the American Alt Right than Greater Turkestan proponent Dugin. Even so, this tendency to notice “problems” in Western countries while studiously not extending the same analytical framework to their own country seems to be a defining feature of the Russian nationalist boomer mindset. Is this due to a generational cognitive blind-spot, a concern about alienating their audiences, or fear of possible legal repercussions?
This is something I’m trying to figure out myself.
Re-Navalny. If he were to die today, and the oligarch Usmanov (with whom Navalny is currently feuding) were to die tomorrow, Limonov would “not be sad.” Skeptical about whether the Americans are financing him, but that said, he does ask where does the money for Navalny’s extensive network of regional election HQs come from? Complains about state persecution of nationalists, citing one “Yura” who got three years for non-violently defending a female journalist from the police, while Navalny is walking free despite having two suspended sentences. The unspoken implication is that Limonov thinks the Kremlin is in cahoots with Navalny.
At this point Limonov wraps up the lecture, everyone claps, and a few people go up to him to have books signed and to discuss things further (including the American fan of Limonov and Unz Review reader who brought me out there).
The next speaker was some NatsBol activist with a boring jeremiad about “economic justice” and the “social lifts of Soviet society.” Limonov, inane as he often is, is at least entertaining. Those activist ideologue types never are, so we left.
.
Is the term “boomer” really applicable to Russia though (or to any other former Eastern bloc country)? It’s probably somewhat useful for the US and western Europe (and yes, a lot of “boomers” there are indeed pretty dreadful and ought to be euthanized), but the life experiences of someone born in Russia in the late 1940s/1950s must be pretty different on average.
Btw, there’s a typo in your “panhandling” section on the right (pecuniary – pecuaniary).
I don’t think there’s anything Jewish in Limonov. His face and personality are inconsistent with that.
past instances of “confiscate and divide” obviously not mentioned as contributory factors)
In the 90s Russia was robbed by the “privatize and liberalize” team instead.
spent the 1970-80s doing drugs and having trysts with powerful Negro studs,
I wonder if that really happened or if that was him trying to look colorful and entertaining later, while writing about it.
For non-Russian speakers: a grenade is sometimes called a limonka in Russian. Because it looks like a lemon. Hence the flags.
It’s not just that Limonov generally tries to be shocking. It’s also that he’s extremely energetic and mentally agile for his age. Drugs and homosex aren’t conducive to that.
Limonov is an East Ukrainian (or Novorossiyan, whatever) punk by origins. That said, lately he’s been trying to look like Trotsky.
You should tell us how the Longevity Party is doing.
His surname is Ukrainian – Savenko. He grew up in Kharkiv but was born in Russia. Savenko’s father was most likely Ukrainian (indicated by his surname and origin in a Russian region on the Ukrainian border) but his mother was an ethnic Russian from the Volga region.
Different but in some ways analogous. The war was over, people started having kids, there was some social liberation in the 1960s (though not nearly to the extent as in the USA).
Hmm… But didn’t he participate, and quite actively, in the 1990s Balkan wars, on the side of the ethnic Serbs? I suspect it’s a bit more nuanced than just the language.
[tendency to notice “problems” in Western countries while studiously not extending the same analytical framework to their own country]
The same analytical framework is inapplicable, because a certain amount of Muslims do belong in Russia, unless you want to give up some of her territory.
Who says that Russian interests are confined to the Russian World? 🙂
Those are spheres of varying levels of importance. I don’t think most Russian nationalists want to annex Serbia, except as a part of some truly gargantuan imperial project (e.g. the Third Empire). On the other hand, many of them think of it as an ally that must be supported.
Why is that poor Monument under attack by commie nazis?
Maybe the world is a parody of The Simpsons.
Obviously they don’t want to annex Serbia (who said they do?), but I suspect they include ethnic Serbs into the ‘Russian World’. They are nazbol’s ‘brothers’, aren’t they?
Interesitng how in Poland in the 80s, calling Russian “rosyjski” was official and proper, and “ruski” was primitive and offensive. I suppose it’s stuck around, too, nobody says “ruski” officially.
It is pretty clear that the analogous issue in Russia relates to Tajiks, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, and Azeris.
Thank you for personally demonstrating another example of this phenomenon. 🙂
About Limonov in 2004, even made a film – the plot focuses how a young Gopnik Limonov becomes a revolutionary in order to seduce a classmate-beauty in high school
Trailer:
Interested in America can shoot a similar movie about Robert Spencer?
Actual Russians should comment on this, but so far as I can tell the distinction between “Ruski” and “Rossiski” goes back hundreds of years in Russia. Goebels and his spiritual descendants have been known to deliberately obfuscate this point in translation, so that for example a bad hombre from the Caucasus becomes Russian while his innocent victims remain Dagestani.
And the former, forms a litmus test for normal behavior based on reality? Where’s the proof that the inhabitants of these eight oblasts in Eastern Ukraine (outside of perhaps a few individuals) are at all interested in being a part of any ‘Russian world’ project? It certainly wasn’t evident in 2014 and later, when Russian led proxys in Donbas were being paid to foment war in this region. The results of this incursion clearly show that only half of Donbas (the portion closest to the Russian border where Russian military and intelligence forces are stationed in mass), showed any real interest in this listless idea. If not, why didn’t the local masses in these eight oblasts turn out in mass to support any such operations? They clearly had their opportunity.
My understanding was that Russian World=ethnocultural Russian area that must be directly incorporated. This does not preclude having a different, less direct kind of interest in non-Russian areas anywhere. I imagine Natsbols are also very interested in e.g. Cuba or Venezuela, but I don’t think anyone considers them a part of the Russian World.
I suppose this is one definition. Another one I saw was not imperial but ‘civilizational’, where a Russian community in, say, California was part of it. This would make more sense to me.
I suppose you’re right: Serbs don’t speak Russian, so technically they don’t belong. But there’s still, for obvious reasons, much more to a (hypothetical) Russian-Serb alliance than mere ‘interest’ (as for Venezuela and such).
As for the ‘Russian World’ in Ukraine, here’s a pre-putsch poll, now disappeared from the Razumkov Center website:
What is the integration course that Ukraine should head for? (regional distribution)
http://web.archive.org/web/20140502200435/http://www.razumkov.org.ua/eng/poll.php?poll_id=666
A much more recent polling shows that Ukrainians are still much more in favor of strengthening their ties with the EU than the Russian led Customs Union (February 2017). More than two to one in favor, out of 21 (out of 22) of the largest Ukrainian cities: http://www.iri.org/sites/default/files/ukraine_nationwide_municipal_survey_final.pdf
Again, where’s any proof that Ukrainians are interested in any ‘Russian World’ political projects?
Where’s the beef?
I’m not sure what the poll is supposed to prove in your world. According to the poll:
There was a split, with the West and Center clearly favoring EU and the South and East clearly favoring the Russian Customs Unions. BUT at the time of this poll Crimea was still part of the South and Donbas was part of the East. These were the most heavily pro-Russian parts of Ukraine and they are no longer part of the South and East, respectively. If that poll were run with the current Ukrainian territory (no Crimea, no Donbas) the South would be close to an even split and the East would be more balanced, albeit still with a clear preference for integration with the Russian customs union.
Moreover, the poll asked about economic integration, not annexation. I suppose most Canadians would prefer to be part of NAFTA rather than the EU; this doesn’t suggest widespread support among Canadians for their country ot become part of the USA. Similarly, support for integration with the Russian customs union vs. the EU doesn’t necessarily mean support for annexation by Russia. Some Russian nationalists and their western dupes seem to forget that, looking at these poll results and concluding that enormus parts of Ukraine hope that the Russian state annexes them. In reality that sort of sentiment was only widespread in Crimea and Donbas.
Actually, within the newest poll results (February, 2017) even within all of the largest oblast cities in the East and South, there’s a clear preference for EU integration. Only Mariupol shows a preference for CU integration.
And who says it does? We are talking about the Russian World here, not hypothetical new Russian empire.
There were more pre-putsch polls with regional distribution on that website, including, as I remember, on regional cultural inclinations. But, like I said, they’ve been disappeared. As for post-putsch polling, obviously opinion polling during a civil war is less than meaningless.
Damn I miss the original eXile. I read Limonev on livejournal, but the machine translation is pretty incomprehensible. What the heck happened to Ames?
Interesting poll. About 1/4 of Odessans now want Ukraine to join NATO (43% would still vote against it). But EU beats Russian Customs Union in Odessa, 39% to 34%.
Corruption trend from Feb. 2016 to Feb. 2017 has bene very uneven. In the 2017 survey 55% of Kievans have not bribed anyone; in 2016 this figure was 48%, so considerable improvement. Uzhhorod has improved from 37% to 52%. 39% of Odessans didn’t bribe anyone in the 2017 survey compared to 37% in the 2016 survey. But those not bribing anyone in Zaporizhia dropped from 68% in the 2016 survey to 48% in the 2017 survey; Ternopil from 73% to 47%. Lviv is the least corrupt city in Ukraine outside the warzone although it’s seen the % of people who haven’t bribed anyone shrink from 68% last year to 61% this year.
Svoboda has ceased to exist as a viable party in Lviv (it gets only 3% support), which is dominated by the Lviv mayor’s Samopomich Party. The two forces had struggled with each other in that city but it looks like Svoboda has completely lost. But Svoboda is the leading party in the other two Galician oblast capitals and has become the most popular party in Khmelytski, east of Galicia, which had been part of the USSR since 1920.
Tymoshenkos’s is the leading party in Kherson, on the Black Sea.
While the Opposition Party is the single largest party in Dnipro (Dnipropetrovsk) it and its pro-Russian ally Za Zhyttia are easily outnumbered by various pro-Western parties. This phenomenon is weaker but also evident in Zaporizhia and Mykolaiv.
The pro-Russian parties have a slim edge of overall support in Odessa. This means most of the youth there are easily pro-West.
Kharkiv is the only place with a fairly strong pro-Russian advantage. Though the overall ratio of pro-Russian to pro-Western is about 2:1, not 10:1 as had been the case in Donbas prior to the split. I’d guess the youth are close to evenly split in Kharkiv.
You are unaware of numerous comments here and elsewhere suggesting that Ukraine split up based on poll results such as those, with the pro-Russian parts joining Russia?
In your world, during civil wars people don’t have opinions that can be accurately measured?
Well, Russian actions since then have eroded support for Russia. However I suspect that some % of the “difficult to answer” responses, which are higher in the East, might reflect people who are pro-Russian but are reluctant to say so openly. I don’t know how many however.
I don’t know. I can imagine many people that have a pro-Ukrainian government slant are equally reticent to express their true feelings. It’s interesting to see how many more people that are willing to share their opinions favor a pro-EU course in what is usually thought to be ‘Russia friendly’ oblasts. Of those that aren’t willing to express their feelings, I’m sure that the day to day battle to just keep food on the table and provide for other daily supplies supersedes any and all other political persuasions: ‘just leave us alone, we’ll do better off without any war’…
The former state of Ukraine split up (and continues crumbling) because of the putsch in Kiev; western-part anti-Russian elements overthrowing of the government elected by an east/south-centered majority. That’s beyond any controversy. Whether some parts of the former state of Ukraine will manage to join RF, or form independent geopolitical entities, or join, via some sort of reconciliation process, together into a new state of Ukraine is anybody’s guess. But what does it have to do with anything?
That’s right; some of their opinions can’t be polled accurately. And in your world people in territories terrorized by a close equivalent of brown shirts ( http://24-my.info/people-yarosh-shot-a-taxi-driver-for-refusing-to-answer-the-greeting-glory-to-ukraine/ ) are supposed to freely answer questions of their attitudes towards the ‘aggressor state’?
What’s really beyond any controversy is that no one in Ukraine is anxiously waiting for Yanukovych or his family clan to return to Ukraine for another encore. It’s also beyond any controversy that Yanukovych and his ‘family’ were responsible for some of the greatest theft imaginable in Ukraine.
Good riddance, I say, and Poroshenko’s rise to power was fully sanctioned by the Ukrainian electorate, East and West!
Well, the origin of grenade in western languages is pomegranate due to the resemblance of early grenades to that fruit.
Interestingly, when I recently put a Russian article about food and produce shortages of the late Brezhnev/Gorbachev era into google translate so I, a typical monolingual American, could read it, in one paragraph it translated pomegranate into English as “grenade”, but in context was obviously referring to the fruit, but in another paragraph correctly translated the word as “pomegranate”.
OT
Anatoly, you wrote that you can’t blame Trump for selling the Saudis those weapons. Well, if the Saudis’ attack on Qatar really is a result of the Saudi leadership being emboldened by Trump’s visit, then, perhaps, given the American base in Qatar, Trump will be forced to deliver some other goodies for that money. In which case its profitability might turn out to be slightly lower than expected. Even negative. There’s no telling how this will end. (Hopefully just a small coup or something, which will result in another royal family member being installed as emir.)
Also, while I don’t quite doubt that the Qataris really are big sponsors of terrorism, is Trump really dumb enough to believe that the Saudis (with their funding of extremist preachers and mosques) play no role in it, simply because they (and perhaps the Israelis?) said so? Oh, okay, perhaps the US Intelligence Community (the same one which is actively working on toppling Trump) confirmed this wisdom. But still, it takes a special kind of dumb.
I don’t quite feel much sympathy for the Qatari royals, and perhaps it won’t be a bad thing if they get toppled. Fortunately no refugees are coming out of that conflict, and anything that diminishes the dumbest Arabs’ ability to fund extremism in Europe and around the world could be good news.
Whenever I read about the Qatari royal family, I’m reminded of this story.
I don’t really get what’s behind this Qatar-Saudi-Arabia business…is it because Qatar has supported the “democratic” Muslim brotherhood and Saudi-Arabia doesn’t like that (because “democracy” – even the Islamist kind – is a danger to Saudi-Arabia’s royal family)? Pretty strange.
As for Trump, maybe he really is that dumb? At the very least there never was any sign that he had a nuanced understanding of the world outside the US.
Btw, have to say I found this quite interesting:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/the-great-betrayal-of-middle-america
Good analysis. For me, the most telling parameter being measured revolves around EU or CU
preference, with large margins in these Eastern and Southern Ukrainian cities leaning towards EU integration. This parameter trumps all others and is most indicative of where Ukrainians would like to see themselves down the road.
Lets put it this way, do you think that the USA would allow any of the other regimes that fall under its influence to do anything that would be against the interests of Israel ? This thing has to do with Iran, since Qatar has not been hostile as Saudi Arabia has been to Iran. If Iran is the factor then the ultimate reason behind this is Israel.
One incident or ten incidents doesn’t make a wave of terror by brownshirts, terror so extreme that people are afraid on a mass scale to answer whether they want Ukraine to join the Russian customs union on a phone survey. As I indicated in another post, some single-digit effect is possible. You prefer to ignore it all.
Recent events have resulted in many Ukrainians turning away from Russia. This is inconvenient for you, so you prefer pre-war surveys taken before relations soured in order to magnify pro-Russian attitudes. It’s just your intellectual dishonesty on display.
Saudi Arabia just issued 10 points, 24 hour ultimatum to Qatar. This looks more important than Limonov and his traveling clown show.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/06/report-saudi-arabia-gives-24-hour-ultimatum-qatar-experts-warn-military-conflict-looms/
The alleged ten points are here
http://twitter.com/BaFana3/status/872267796750663680
It this whole thing is not fake news, it looks like the “alt right” and “reactionary” folks who wanted to go back to 1914 just got what they wished for.
https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/The_Austro-Hungarian_Ultimatum_to_Serbia_(English_translation)
Ames does a weekly subscribers-only podcast with Gary Brecher/John Dolan: https://www.patreon.com/radiowarnerd
He also recently wrote some stuff about Russia on the exiled website:
http://exiledonline.com/
I know that. People are pissed off that RF didn’t interfere, and still is letting them suffer under the camarilla in Kiev. Should’ve sent troops in the last week of February 2014.
Whoa? I don’t live in Ukraine, and this causes no inconvenience to me whatsoever.
Ho-ho. Projecting again, eh? For a god-fearing fella like you that’s a big risk. This has to be a sin, and I hear Hell is a terrible place. Don’t forget to say a bunch of prayers when you do this…
EU/CU preference has fluctuated historically, you can’t take a snapshot in time and use that to declare one or the other is the future.
Also germane of course is that EU membership is a pipedream in practice.
It seems to me that “the West or Russia” is a false dichotomy that does not serve the interests of inhabitants of this continent, least of all Ukrainians. Sincere questions for AP: What do you think would have happened if the EU had agreed to three-way negotiations (EU/Ukraine/Russia) so that the pre-existing trade relations between Ukraine and Russia could be harmonized with the EU association agreement with Ukraine? Also, if Ukraine had declared neutrality with respect to NATO/RF? And if Yanukovych’s agreement to early elections, as negotiated by various EU members, had been honored? Feel free to ask your own sincere questions in response, but I am genuinely interested in your answers to these questions.
Here’s another ‘snapshot in time’ poll completed in August of 2013 made by the Rozumkov Center that also shows that Ukrainians, on the whole, favored EU integration over CU membership (42% vs 31%): This poll was taken before the Maidan and before Putin unleashed his proxy war in Donbas, to ‘liberate’ the coal miners from the Nazi junta in Kyiv (isn’t that the way the story goes?). The common perception is that none of the social engineering that Russia has been involved with in Ukraine over the last three years has made the prospects of CU integration any more enticing. Wouldn’t you agree?
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2013/08/21/6996420/
Obviously a harmonized Europe, in terms of both economics and security, is better for everyone who actually lives in Europe. The CU was Plan B, since certain people who don’t live in Europe are trying to desperately to make sure Europe does not harmonize. Now we are on Plan C, which is a bloody mess.
There is probably some of that; there is also anger at Russia having stabbed its “brother nation” in the back by seizing Crimea. I have heard the latter complaint from former Yanukovich voters from so-called Novorossiya. They now support a westward path for Ukraine.
It is inconvenient for your position.
No, your dishonesty is as clear as your stupidity.
Correct, though the trend has been pro-EU over time (due to demographics – western parts of Ukraine have had a stable population while the East has declined, and aging – younger people favor the west, pensioners Russia). The strategy prior to Maidan seems to have been to “lock in ” Ukraine with Russia before this trend continued.
Loss of Crimea and Donbas make a pro-EU majority (or at least very solid plurality) certain in the country because Kharkiv and half of Odessa are simply totally outnumbered. Anyone who argues that Ukraine in its current borders is anything but solidly pro-Western is either dishonest or misled.
The relevant question is not how pro-Western Ukrainians are but how pro-Ukraine the West is, and I think the answer is evidently “not at all”.
Yes, it would be ideal if everyone got along.
My understanding – and I could be wrong because those events occurred several years ago – is that Russia did not want Ukraine to become a back-door for EU good to enter Russia. This was a reasonable position for Russia to take, but precluded Ukraine from both joining the EU and maintaining its current arrangement with Russia. Ukraine had to choose one or the other.
It would have been nice for Ukraine to do both but I’m not sure that was a real possibility.
I know someone who was present during Yanukovch’s negotiations with the EU. Yanukovich basically wanted massive bribes from them that would benefit his family personally. Russia was more willing to go for this sort of thing than was the EU.
Prior to the war in the East support for NATO was in the 20s and 30s. Ukraine joining NATO would not have happened, at least in the short to medium term. The Opposition had explicitly declared NATO membership a priority, perhaps to get more American support.
I’m not sure how Russia would have reacted to a clearly anti-Russian uprising (one that was meant to overthrow what had become a Russia ally in order to turn to the EU, away from the Russian customs Union) that explicitly declared neutrality with regards to NATO.
I suspect the Russian side would have assume that NATO would have been on the cards eventually (remember what happened with the former Warsaw Pact!) in such a case and would not have reacted differently.
The widespread and realistic assumption in Ukraine was that, given his pattern of past behavior, Yanukovich would have spent the time until the next election preparing to subvert it in some way, given that he had zero chance of winning it. Maybe he would have beefed up interior ministry troops from Crimea and Donbas in the capital to prepare for election cancellation claiming the deal was signed under duress (the West would have sanctioned him, but Russia would not have),* perhaps he would have consolidated his grip in the East to make a post-election split with him in charge there viable, at “best” he would take the time to loot and cover his tracks as much as possible before fleeing to exile in Russia after the election.
The Opposition were openly seeking to investigate his corrupt regime and thereby probably imprison him after their election victory (which would have been certain in a free election – he was losing by double digits in every poll); Maidan caught him by surprise, delaying the election would have simply allowed him several months preparation.
and reneged on the imposed agreement, driving the opponents/traitors into prison or exile where they belonged. And Russia will support him and his sovereignty, as they do Assad’s.
Thanks, interesting. So if I interpret this correctly, it looks indeed like Qatar’s support for the Muslim brotherhood/Hamas is the main reason for Saudi-Arabia’s confrontational stance towards Qatar (also explains why Egypt is joining in).
You’re kidding? Why do you think that sanctions were placed on Russia? Why are American and Canadian military advisers in Ukraine, and in the case of Canada weapons too? Even the Trump administration is on record for supporting Ukraine in its battle against Russia, as are many US congressman and senators who are always working towards extending more help to Ukraine.
The most recent poll I’ve seen (which wasn’t limited to cities), from December 2016, doesn’t really support the idea that there has been a large pro-Western shift in eastern Ukraine. The poll didn’t ask about economic integration with the EU vs. Russia’s Customs Union (which as AK noted upthread, is a meaningless question- the real world choice is integration with Customs Union vs. the status quo). However, on questions involving Maidan and the civil war, even with Crimea and Donbass excluded, huge regional differences persist. For example, in the south and east, 51% and 57% agreed that Maidan was an illegal coup, while in the center and west, only 24% and 21% did. That doesn’t seem much different from the result you would have obtained in February 2014 (overall, the results were 48%-34% against Maidan being a coup, which if accurate is surprisingly close).
http://osvita.mediasapiens.ua/mediaprosvita/research/yak_rosiyska_propaganda_vplivae_na_suspilnu_dumku_v_ukraini_doslidzhennya/
Well, ‘illegal coup’ is kinda legalistic-theoretical. I’d go with this one:
https://strana.ua/news/45634-dlya-poloviny-ukraincev-rossiyane-yavlyayutsya-bratskim-narodom-opros.html
December 2016. Russians are a ‘brotherly people’: 28% west, 41,2% center, 60,5% south, 87,1% east. Only 6,5% easterners disagree. And this is despite the fact that the attitude towards Russia soured a lot after the 2014 referendum in Donbas and atrocities in Odessa and elsewhere went largely ignored.
The real Eduard Limonov is even more extraordinary than tells Emmanuel Carrère in his book “LIMONOV”.
Today , in Russia, Eduard Limonov is a model for the most famous Russian young writers (Prilepin , Shargunov , Senchin , Sadulaev , etc …).
All this and much more is on the website TOUT SUR LIMONOV.
There are a lot of new information about the real Eduard Limonov , photos and videos hard to find.
The presentation page is in French, very easy to understand with Google Trad .
There are also 30 pages in English :
http://www.tout-sur-limonov.fr/
The numbers you cite aren’t about whether one wants a westward vs. Russian trajectory for the country, but about how people interpret the Maidan.
The people I talked to thought that the Maidan was an illegal coup too. They were opposed to it. They were, in their words, angry that Russia took advantage of this situation and stabbed Ukraine in the back by grabbing Crimea. They concluded that Russia has betrayed its brother. I don’t know how widespread this argument is, but I doubt these people were unique weirdos. They were from Dnipropetrovsk, the least pro-Russian area of so-called Novorossiya. Pro-western parties won over 60% of the vote in Dnipropetrovsk parliamentary elections in late 2014, after Crimea was annexed by Russia. This number exaggerates support due to lower turnout (presumably by pro-Russians choosing not to participate). Taking the lower turnout into account and assuming the missing voters would have all voted for the pro-Russian parties, the “real” pro-Western vote in Dnipropetrovsk would still be around 55%. This is a large increase in support for pro-Western parties from the 2012 election, where in Dnipropetrovsk the pro-Western parties got around 39% of the vote.
Here’s a poll from February 2017:
http://www.kiis.com.ua/?lang=eng&cat=reports&id=689&page=1
In the South the EU beats the Russian Customs Union 32.7% to 30.1%, with 26.4% wanting to join neither. I don’t feel like searching for pre-2014 polls but I really doubt these figures were similar in that region. Only the East preferred Russia over the EU, 35.4% to 13.9% with the most popular response 36.9% being neither one nor the other.
Not yet, there aren’t trenches built.
What a wonderful world it would be, however.
Ukrainians would like to see themselves in a society that forces them to live among large numbers of aggressive, intolerant, violent, and intimidating African and Arab Muslim savages? A society that allows strangers to rape and fondle their daughters and assault and humiliate their sons?
Ukrainians would like to see themselves in a society that glorifies moral depravity, disease, mental illness, and the dying out of their families and nation, I.e. homosexuality and quote transgenderism and homosexual quote marriage and homosexuals adopting innocent impressionable children?
Okay, Ukrainians, if that’s what you really want.
If forced to choose between the current EU and the current Europe of barren, timid, deracinated, selfhating Europeans, and Russia, that’s a tough choice.
Hasn’t happened to Poland or Hungary. Wouldn’t happen to Ukraine.
There are far more Muslims by % in the Russian-Central Asian Customs Union than in the EU, much less in the eastern EU which Ukraine would like to join.
Judging by statistics like abortion, divorce, regular church attendance Poland is the most moral country in the white world. It’s part of the EU.
Russia has the highest HIV rate outside Africa and SE Asia. You prefer that Ukraine join that world?
Tough choice.
Not that it matters much but since this is first time I hear that Limonov is a Jew:
Have you read his autobiographical books? (“Подросток Савенко”, “У нас была великая эпоха”) Savenko appears to be his real name. Unless Russian Wikipedia intentionally misleads, absolutely nothing in the names of his parents suggests Jewishness:
Отец — Вениамин Иванович Савенко, мать — Раиса Фёдоровна Зыбина — из Горьковской области.
http://ed-limonov.livejournal.com/339799.html
If you haven’t read anything, I’d suggest you do. The guy is a real weirdo but he is a damn good writer.
But the CU’s Muslims are both more secular than the EU’s (with average IQ’s probably about 10 points higher), and much more geographically segregated. The Muslim percentage of European Russia is similar to the EU’s, and the Muslim citizen percentage is lower. According to the 2010 census, less than 3% of Moscow’s citizen population was Muslim, so Paris is likely to have a Muslim mayor before Moscow does.
If Ukraine would like to join an economic bloc which doesn’t exist, it would make a lot more sense to form one with Russia and Belarus, then with eastern Europe. It would certainly be a lot easier to form such a union.
The fertility rate is a lot more important to a nation’s future than the HIV rate. Poland’s fertility might be the lowest in the white world. And Russia’s majority-Slav regions have a higher fertility rate than the white populations of nearly every other country.
European Russia includes the Volga region (thus – Tatarstan and Bashkorostan) and the Caucuses. I doubt this.
In contrast to Ukraine’s eastern neighbor Russia, Ukraine’s western neighbor Poland is about .1% Muslim.
So in terms of geographic segregation from Muslims, within the EU zone Ukraine would be separated from the western EU by the Muslim-free zone of Poland. In contrast, Russia itself is as Muslim as the most Muslim western EU countries, and then beyond Russia there is central Asia.
Moscow is between 10-15 % Muslim:
https://www.rbth.com/politics_and_society/2017/03/13/should-muscovites-fear-muslims_718753
As a percentage this is lower than Paris but in terms of raw numbers it is the largest Muslim population of any European city (other than, of course, Istanbul).
I responded to the other commenter’s remarks about Russia’s great moral virtues, in contrast to the EU.
Romania’s is worse.
Poland didn’t have a 90s collapse, so birth rate will be a little less extremely low.
This is true of some of the ethnic Russian Siberian regions. Not so true of the more densely populated European Russian areas. The Central Federal District had a TFR of 1.51 in 2014, about the same as Ukraine in 2016 and lower than the EU average of 1.6.
“Trump and his $110 arms deal with the Saudis” -typo presumably, unless Trump sold Saudis a box of ammo.
Limonov was always quite entertaining when he wrote for Exile magazine. I’ve always maintained that his absurdist political antics are something that should be used in the West. While kekistan is presently real and moves closer to corporeal world relevance on a daily basis, thus far there have been no political entrepreneurs who have attempted to pull a Limonov in the West.
I meant Western Russia, the contiguous over 90% Slavic area, including Moscow, with almost exactly a third of Russia’s population (the contiguous southwestern area containing the seven majority-Muslim regions has almost exactly another third, and the final third is also overwhelmingly Slavic).
Even if the Muslim percentage of Moscow’s citizen population had doubled in 7 years- which seems unlikely- that would still only be around 5%.
I know, it also doesn’t include registered guest workers. I specified citizens, because noncitizens don’t have political power.
But the majority of that number are guest workers and illegals, who generally won’t be casting votes for mayor.
In raw numbers yes, but in raw numbers the EU has many more Muslims than Russia.
The other commenter contrasted Russia with the EU glorifying “the dying out of their families and nation.” And arguably, choosing to have children is a virtue.
I did the math on this once, and (assuming it was correct) in 2015 when Russian TFR was 1.78, overall the Slavic-majority regions had a population-weighted TFR of about 1.73 (vs. 1.99 for the Muslim regions, and 1.75 for all non-Muslim regions).
Russian boomers were born in the 1960’s and picked up 10 year old fashions from Anglo-Europe.
Most of my Russian friends are from this group.
Russia is scarcely any more diverse than France or even the UK now, despite the vast majority of its non-Slavic minorities still being indigenous to it.
Map via Mark Yuray:
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/51c946cde4b0f05142538988/t/530f1874e4b05a56d51cfeee/1393498231260/shaded-scaled-percentages.png
The major countries of Western Europe had gone from basically 99% European to 85%-95% in the past fifty years. Over half a century they had imported a degree of diversity that the Russian Empire acquired over five centuries of expansion.
The true focus of comparison should be the share of Central Asian immigrants to Russia (minus indigenous Kazakhs) – okay, perhaps also the Chechens, Ingush, and Dagestanis, considering they entered the Russian Empire at about the same time as Central Asia – versus the share of non-EU immigrants, of whom most would be MENA and Africans, immigrants in the EU.
By this metric, Russia does much better, though it apparently intends to replicate their “success” anyway, but that’s a separate discussion.
To be sure Poland (Visegrad, Baltics) might be 99% European, but that’s not so much a function of them being hardcore nationalists as that there is absolutely no reason for a Syrian or Somali to stay in Poland when he can hop over to Germany and Sweden and gets 10x+ as much welfare.
Ergo for Ukraine, which at this point is not actually a substantial improvement even over Kyrgyzstan.
http://bdg.by/news/authors/zarplaty-v-stranah-sng-iyul-2016
Not analogous you ignorant dumbfuck….the Soviet Union had a massive shortage of males after 1945 you idiot….unlike the USA. Many parts of “social liberation” the Soviet Union had long before the USA. Despite the male deficit……amazingly for the USSR, ethnic Russians (i.e including malorossiyans from the artifical state of “Ukraine”) lived longer and longer than they had ever done before, from the end of the war upto the mid-70’s..at an expectancy level comparable to most of the western countries.
Estimates place Moscow at 10-15% Muslim, including unregistered people. Locals sometimes feel like this is an underestimate.
Most Muslims in western Europe don’t have political power, either. I’m not sure that any Muslim leader is as powerful or prominent in any western European country as Kadyrov is in Russia. Perhaps the London mayor, but he’s only been around for a couple years.
If you want to compare the EU, compare it to the Customs Union of which Russia is a part. This Customs Union has more Muslims than the EU both as % and in terms of raw numbers.
Russia has more Muslims both as % and in raw numbers than any individual EU country (though it may be tied with France in terms of %).
His full quote, that I responded to, was “Ukrainians would like to see themselves in a society that glorifies moral depravity, disease, mental illness, and the dying out of their families and nation,”
Highest HIV rate outside sub-Saharan Africa and parts of SE Asia, highest homicide rate among white people, very high divroce rate, abortion rate (while falling) still close to if not highest in the world, etc. And Russia’s TFR while better than the EU average is still well below replacement level – so, dying out also. Particularly given that the country is not ethnically homogeneous like Poland or Ukraine are, and attracts migrants unlike those countries do. Russia’s mildly less-bad TFR isn’t such a great thing when taking that into account.
Correct. But it is. And many of those non-Europeans are not Muslims. Here is a map of percentage Muslim in Europe in 2010:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Islam_in_Europe-2010.svg
You see that the territories of the Poland-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Austria-Hungary (minus Austria itself) are a big Muslim-free zone in the heart of geographic Europe. Russia is the most Muslim country of all, and right to its east is Kazakhstan. Russia is in a customs union with Kazakhstan.
I was pointing out the ridiculousness of using “avoiding Islam” as a reason for Ukraine to reject joining Poland in the EU and joining Russia instead. One can make other arguments (economic ties, bad Neocons, whatever) but Islam is a ludicrous reason.
Indeed, any “anti-Islam” warriors seeking to force Ukraine into the Eurasian Customs Union are therefore also seeking to break up this Muslim-free zone in the heart of Europe, splitting up the Muslim-free countries from each other, bonding Ukraine to highly Muslim Russia and Central Asia, and bonding Poland with increasingly Islamic western Europe. It’s a kind of anti-pure-European gerrymandering.
If anyone was sincere in wanting to see a purely European homeland, they would work on some sort of Intermarium.
Indeed they have. And is Russia still planning to include other Central Asian countries as it expands its customs union?
It seems that the EU is now slowing down this migration. The public have largely woken up to the problem.
The issue is how Islamic a country is, not how they came to be so Islamic. Someone was arguing that in order to avoid EU Islamification Ukraine ought to join Russia, a country more Islamic than any European one (at most, tied with France) in a Customs Union that includes much of Muslim Central Asia. It’s absurd.
Of course, most of Russia’s Muslims are indigenous. So? Tatarstan is in the very heart of Russia. Russia’s Muslim population doesn’t reflect government policy to nearly the extent as in western Europe but the discussion wasn’t about whose policies have been worse over the past 50 years.
It’s both. As is evident from elections, Poles obviously don’t want them. And their government doesn’t make it easy for them.
Well, that also works in reverse. Greater Russia will be almost 90% Slavic vs. 85% for the RF.
Though of course it’s probably not a good idea to put that on any of the propaganda brochures for Ukrainians and Belorussians since their regard for the All-Russian commonweal is less than that of 13th century Novgorod’s.
Outright integration is unfeasible for many different reasons.
I see the current situation as analogous to what prevailed with France and Britain wrt their former colonies, and Germany wrt Turks, in the 1950s-60s. The hope and expectation then was that the Gasterbeiter would return home, didn’t work out that way; instead their formed criminalized underclasses in the former proletarian urban areas.
The main concern is that something similar would occur in Russia wrt Central Asia in the next 30-50 years. I see contradictory signals.
“Lying eyes” test says that we are seeing this in Moscow, and to a lesser extent in SPB and the other big cities.
OTOH, the gap between Central Asia and Russia isn’t quite as huge as that between France and Algeria, and Tajiks and Kyrgyz who come to Russia find it easier to go back home (and then go back for seasonal work in Russia, then go home again) than did Algerians/Pakistanis/Turks/etc.
Family reunification is going to have strong lingering effects for at least the next few years – not much Europe can do about it now, short of going hardcore closed borders.
Okay, fair enough, point conceded.
There are no consequences for poking the EU though.
What happens if they eventually put them before a serious ultimatum with serious consequences?
Orban loves trolling the EU, he is as hardcore as you get in Visegrad, but when things got serious with Brexit, he nonetheless took out a full page ad in a major British newspaper imploring them to vote Remain.
This is preferable for Russians wanting Russia to be a Slavic place. But from a wider perspective – you are talking about reducing the practically fully European zone by about 35%, perhaps destroying its long-term viability, in order to boost Russia’s Slavic component by about 5%, still making it less European than most of the other European countries.
I agree that integration into the Russian state won’t happen. I was maybe a little unclear, but was discussing the potential expansion of the Eurasian Economic Union to include more Muslim countries. It currently unites Russia, Belarus and Armenia with Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The current head of the EEU is the president of Kyrgyzstan. Tajikistan has been formally invited to join; apparently there is the goal of Uzbekistan one day joining.
The Eurasian Economic Union is modeled on the EU, but hasn’t reached the stage of having a single currency yet (though that is a goal).
Russia itself is about as Islamic as the most Islamic EU country. But it’s integrating with an entity that is far, far more Islamic than the EU, and likely to become even more so.